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After leaving work to care for her children, it took Bobbie Grafeld years to land an executive position.

Photo courtesy of Walmart Labs

Like many new mothers, Bobbie Grafeld left the workforce to take care of her children just as her career started to peak. When she tried to re-enter the job market, she felt her six years away from the office cancelled out all her prior experience and skills.

“When I decided to return to the workforce, there were no opportunities for me to pick up where my career had left off,” she says.

Grafeld eventually found a job as the executive assistant for the head of HR at PayPal, despite the fact that she had nearly four years’ experience running a branch of top-10 U.S. bank, and three years as a senior HR manager at a large fashion goods retailer. “Part of me felt over qualified and the other part of me felt grateful for the opportunity,” she says.

It took Grafeld several years of working through the ranks just to reach the same level of responsibility she had enjoyed at her previous job before leaving to take care of her family, and another several years to reach a position with C-level visibility as vice president of people at Walmart Labs.

So when a colleague told Grafeld about Path Forward, an paid internship program for women and men who have at least five years of professional experience and are looking to return to work after taking a career pause of at least two years for caregiving, Grafeld immediately wanted to bring the program to Walmart Labs. Other corporations partnering with Path Forward include Oracle, NBCUniversal, Verizon and even Grafeld’s former employer, PayPal. Path Forward works with more than 35 companies in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City and Denver.

Participants will be paired with seasoned managers and mentors to help them navigate their return to the workforce, Grafeld says. The program places an emphasis on learning and development, and the gaining and retraining of skills, such as software engineering and product development, Grafeld says. During those 16 weeks, the interns will have the opportunity to assess Walmart as a company, and Walmart will be able to assess them as an employee. The hope is that qualified candidates will be offered full-time employment at Walmart after the program ends, Grafeld says. Walmart also will be looking at ways to expand the program.

Walmart purposefully decided to start Path Forward during the store’s busiest time—September through the holidays, Grafeld says. “We wanted to make sure they were positioned to work on hard tasks,” she says. “We are giving them a good foundation, retraining where needed, setting them up with mentors, and having them work on real things and do real work.”